


A Soft Reminder

by reshirama



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma Recovery, post MGS4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reshirama/pseuds/reshirama
Summary: The future doesn’t have to be the past. His son will not suffer as he did. And that, he thinks, is what he wants to pass down. A world without unnecessary violence. A world where his son will never know gunfire or blood or the cold thrill of slaughter.Raiden recovers, slowly. But it's better than he's ever been.





	A Soft Reminder

**Author's Note:**

> me, projecting the fuck onto raiden: whats up lads
> 
> anyway i dislike mgr:r's interpretation of raiden. good game but they butchered him. let him be happy! he's more than his past! mgr doesnt exist in this fic whoops

Jack is happy. He’s… content. Life turns, and paranoia seems to have less of a hold on him as each day goes by. That doesn’t mean it’s gone- he still jumps round corners, sees Solidus towering in every shadow. There are no more guns, and yet he still hears the spray of bullets. Sometimes his hands run red, and he washes and washes them until Rose makes alarmed comments about his circuits. 

 He is still a guilty soul, but in this world, everyone is one way or another. The Patriots had their fingers in every single pie. Everyone had some hand in the destruction of the world. So he’s not alone anymore, even if his burden is harder to bear than many others. Some days he feels like Atlas, with the faces of everyone he’s killed (how could have he forgotten?) playing back in his head like a film on repeat. He won’t ever quite be free, but he has a son now, and a wife. He has a purpose, he guesses. He’s currently unemployed, but he won’t be soon- his recovery period is coming to an end.

 He almost wishes it wouldn’t. Having nothing to do, for the first time in his life, feels… good.  On weekdays, he has the luxury of leisure- he’s never had that before, the freedom to choose to do not a lot, to watch bad daytime TV on the couch and call Rose just to hear her voice. At the weekends, he can spend all day with John. Rose says he spoils him rotten, but what else can he do? He’s missed five years of being a father. Seeing his son smile at him without any inhibitions is the most incredible feeling- it’s like he has a heart again, beating through a body made of flesh. 

 Some days the only reason he gets up in the morning is to take John to the park, buy him an ice cream, and spend the day holding his hand. A reminder, a soft reminder, that he is not George Sears, and John is not him. The future doesn’t have to be the past. His son will not suffer as he did. And that, he thinks, is what he wants to pass down. A world without unnecessary violence. A world where his son will never know gunfire or blood or the cold thrill of slaughter. He doesn’t even consider cutting his circuits anymore, or just leaving the way he did five years ago. He has to see it with his own two eyes, this world. He has to see Rose grow grey hairs and cry at every one of John’s school plays. He has to do the things with John and Rose that his parents never could do with him, were never given the chance to. 

And Snake- David, Jack has been told to call him multiple times, but can never  _ quite _ do it- he visits every week. They think he’s reaching the end, but he’s holding on. Jack has never met someone quite as tough as him, quite as resilient. It’s awe inspiring. The hero worship has faded, Jack thinks, enough for him to see Snake without those rose tinted glasses, but it doesn’t make what he sees any less incredible. Otacon- Hal,  _ jesus _ \- has teased him more than once, but it’s not like he can talk, exactly, on the subject of hero worship or fanboyism. Jack would say that if Sunny hadn’t done it for him multiple times. 

And Sunny- oh god, Sunny- is flourishing in the sunlight for which she was named. He remembers it. She was just a number on the door, and it made him sick. A two year old already speaking in code and the language of science before she could speak a word of her mother tongue. Holding her in his arms, against his chest, when he was still flesh and bone, was one of the few times he had felt truly alive since the Big Shell incident.  

 And then they had flushed the nanomachines from her body, and ran, ran with the sun breaking over the horizon, and all Jack could think, in that moment where he felt genuinely human, was  _ That’s her. She’s the sun. _

 And so, when he had dropped her with Snake and Otacon, he had just said, “Her name is Sunny. She’s Olga’s daughter.” And then ran, feeling their gaze on his back like burning lights. 

 He had spent the next year or so chasing the high he had felt with her tiny warm body pressed to his chest. It was that rush that had doomed him, though. One misstep and it was all over. No restart. No repeat. Jack had never truly been a stealth agent. He was always a soldier- a good one, but no stealthy assassin.

 His efforts had made a difference, right? He could hear his allies calling down the hall and gunfire and screaming, and it all went numb, number than numb.

 His whole body became a phantom limb, his mouth a twisted snarl, feet pointed and fingers twisted into claws. He was a prototype, a test bed. They said he’d never walk again. They said he’d die.

 But Sunny wasn’t yet safe. They’d find her, if he went offline. His survival still meant her’s. They were linked, had been since her birth, interconnected and twisted. Two orphans shaped into soldiers, into scientists. At the very least she had a chance to become something, and that something depended on him.

 So he lived by sheer force of terrible, ugly will, limped out of that facility riddled with bullets in a half finished body because he had no other choice, when he was found. And the next he knew, aside from spots of consciousness here and there, he was in Europe, and his body no longer trailed wires and sparked as he moved. Muscle mass made of silicon and plastic clenched and unclenched, and he was as whole as he would ever be. 

And he continued to live for Sunny. He saw bits and pieces of her, enough to confirm she was alive and happy. And that was enough to keep him alive. 

 He makes sure to see her every week. There’s still a kind of kinship between them that will never go- he saved her life, she saved his (in more ways than one). Rose called her his little sister once, and he can’t disagree. Family is foreign to him- or it was. But he’s honoured to call Sunny family, if she’ll have him.

Sunny has thrived outside. She no longer stammers, she grins at him with her entire body, she rambles off scientific facts so fast that he cannot keep up, but it doesn’t matter- she is happy. All the pain, the uncertainty, the loss of his body was worth it for her, for her to be here and to be happy, Jack thinks.

 His name, once a curse, was lifted upon her tongue. Few call him Raiden anymore, but that’s okay. Jack the Ripper died a long time ago. Only Jack, the true Jack, his new self, guilt ridden and plagued by nightmares, remains. But he’s moving forward. 

 Recovery isn’t miraculous or instantaneous. It’s taking John and Sunny to the zoo and not having a panic attack halfway through. It’s being able to laugh with Snake for just one moment about how  _ obvious _ he was on Big Shell all those years ago. It’s coffee breaks with Otacon, lighting a candle for Emma one night. It’s holding Rose’s hand and thinking, ‘ _ I forgive you _ .’

He’ll still wake screaming, grasping at his arms to think  _ yes, they’re still there _ . Solidus’ voice will sometimes call into his ear when he’s with John and he has to step away, because he is afraid of what he might do. He still has days where he stares out the window of a high building and just considers jumping.

 But for the first time in his life, he has a list of things that keep him alive for himself and himself alone. So it’s a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> i would consume 10 buses for sunny emmerich


End file.
